IN my second year at university I joined an escort agency. I'm a very pretty girl with a good figure and brains, so I had no shortage of clients.

Most wanted sex and were prepared to pay for it. I ended up leaving uni with a healthy bank balance as well as my degree.

It was just the easy money that kept me going because I ended up hating the men using me for sex.

I was thinking of quitting when I met my boyfriend, who was genuinely only looking for a pretty escort to impress his boss at a company dinner. We hit it off straight away, exchanged phone numbers and became great friends.

Eventually we fell in love. He's helped me get out of the escort business and find a proper job. Now we've been having sex for three months but the problem is I can't relax with him completely and I don't know why.

Miriam replies...

YOU might have relished the easy money but plainly you hated your life.

I imagine, like many sex workers, you protected yourself by keeping things strictly businesslike, retaining no-go areas of your body and refusing to be intimate emotionally. Now you don't have to pretend any more, and can kiss and be touched to your heart's content, it seems you're finding it hard to marry emotional and physical intimacy and forget your boyfriend isn't just another paying customer.

Getting out of your other life will take some adjustment and it won't happen instantly, so be patient with yourself. If you can't relax, you could pretend you're getting paid a lot, do the business, and hope the real emotions start to kick in.

But to be fair to both of you, it's better to learn to get off on the real rewards - like knowing there's someone who really values you, who treats you like a person instead of a sex object, someone you can trust and cuddle up with, who will be there for you and who you're lucky to have in your life.

Avoiding full sex and concentrating on foreplay and all those other elements which were missing from the old scene should help you appreciate sex is a beautiful gift and one you want to share freely with the man you love.